Abstract: Western powers often turn to international sanctions in order to exert pressure on incumbent governments and signal their support for the opposition. Yet whether, and through what mechanisms, sanctions trigger protest remains unclear. We argue that sanction threats work as an international stamp of approval for would-be protesters; they encourage collective action against governments. Moreover, sanction threats send particularly clear and coherent signals if multiple senders issue them and if they focus on human rights, which makes such sanctions threats more effective in sparking social unrest. Using count models of protest activity, we find strong support for our arguments. We corroborate our findings with qualitative evidence from the case of Zimbabwe.
Abstract: Recent empirical work scrutinizes the ability of economic sanctions to destabilize targeted leaders. Limitations in data and modeling choices, however, may have inflated estimates of sanctions’ efficacy. I propose a unified theoretical model, incorporating the possibility that leaders targeted with threats and imposed sanctions differ in baseline risks from those who are not. I combine this hazards approach with an empirical strategy to account for differences in ex ante risks and improved data on leader failure. This approach uncovers a considerably more modest effect. Sanctions rarely destabilize their targets.
Abstract: Rich democracies show an interest in supporting fledgling democracies through financial and diplomatic assistance. The connection between aid receipt and democratic stability, however, is difficult to pin down with null, negative, and positive relationships having been uncovered. In this paper, we focus on whether the coercive side of foreign aid can successfully redirect floundering democracies. Under what conditions will such punishment call new democratic leaders into line rather than push them into old tactics? We argue that the confluence of domestic political preferences and electoral threat will condition the incentives of incumbent aid recipients. A viable political opposition can jockey for support from the donor states, promising more friendly policies and shaming the incumbent at the polls. Perversely, this strong democratic element may incentivize democratic backsliding rather than progress unless the opposition is very firmly entrenched. Our results confirm that punishing democracies can only produce good outcomes under a narrow swathe of political conditions: Only if the donor prefers the opposition’s economic ideology to that of the incumbent but that opposition poses little electoral threat.
Current status: Revising. Please contact me if you would like to see a draft.
Abstract: Economic sanction threats operate as signals to domestic constituents about target competence. The relationship between sender and target contextualizes this information, serving as a proxy for how constituents interpret the signal. Targeted leaders may lose support if they accept it, but if constituents reject the information, leaders may enjoy a rally effect. Though sanctions over such high politics issues as political and military strategy may be more likely to emerge in historically antagonistic dyads, this tendency is offset by targets' political risks: targets in difficult political situations have incentives to escalate or stand firm against senders that constituents distrust. On the other hand, political insecurity makes a target attractive if the sender can count on constituents accepting its message and if the plausibility of escalation is low due to good relations and issue domain. Statistical analyses of sender-target dyads from 1976-2004 support the hypothesized conditional relationship between historical conflict and target insecurity.
Current status: Revising. Please contact me if you would like to see a draft.
Abstract: Recent literature on economic sanctions asks whether external coercion, in the form of ongoing or new sanction threats and impositions, can harm targeted leaders' ability to hold onto office, spur domestic political protest, or cause spikes in repressive action. Little attention has been paid to the measurable effects of the alternative to remaining under the punishment of outside powers. What political consequences follow when leaders give in to the demands of sanctioning states? This paper proposes a set of possible patterns of domestic responses, distinguished by sender-target relationships, issues at stake, initial responses to the sanction threat, and the nature of concessions. Hypotheses derived from this framework will be evaluated using the Threats and Impositions of Economic Sanctions v2, and a variety of data sets on domestic unrest, from protests to coup plots.
Current Status: Early development